Thursday, July 28, 2016

Jasper? Yes!

Spyder took the lead down 16 to access our route of the day—93A. At the time we didn’t know that we would be seeing this mountain up close.

We took any side road that branched off and found that they were all wonderfully curvy, squiggly roads up and down mountains.

Our first trip ended at the gate leading to the Marmot Basin ski area. Down a little side road we saw our first wildlife. We’re guessing some kind of grouse.

Our next road led up to the Jasper SkyTram. The road ended in a parking lot well below the top.

We selected Otters’ Cache for lunch.

Just as we were getting into lunch we discovered that this should have been named Mosquito Heaven.

As soon as we moved it started to rain!

To start the afternoon off right we found a true mountain switch back road to ride. There were about 6 of these,

and eight of these.

We ended up at the base of Mt. Edith Cavell, which we had seen from 93 on our way to Hinton on Monday, and again today from 93A. This is what’s left of a true glacier.

The blue ice tells you that it is very old.

Nice cascades (one on the left too) and a waterfall.

Back down we went and along the Athabascan River valley to the confluence of these two rivers, one a clear blue snow melt river, the other a sagy-green glacier melt river full of silt.

Whirpool in front, Athabascan in back.

Brock and I were in here for less than 30 seconds. My feet were numb.

That’s COLD!!!!!!

More fun with water. This is the awesome Athabascan Falls.

The water tumbles down a narrow canyon a long way past this point.

The rest of 93A was all downhill.

It ended in 93, which we took north towards home along the valley floor. Snow? No just white rocks and green trees.

We’d given up on wildlife when we ran into these big horn sheep just posing in the road. Notice the ram in the street keeping watch over his flock.

Still brimming with excitement over the sight of wildlife, we tooled along enjoying the wonderful rock formations.

I noticed this interesting formation. It ran from the road straight up for about 50’. As I looked up, another flock of sheep met my eye standing nonchalantly on the thinnest of ledges. I took a quick shot, but didn’t get lucky. O well.